Addresses:

Career

Began in the promotions department of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) in
London, England; directed music videos and worked in
artists–and–repertoire (A&R) at BMG; headed
international product development for BMG Interactive; co–founder
and president, Rockstar Games, New York, NY, 1998—.

Sidelights

Sam Houser is president of Rockstar Games, the company behind the
Grand Theft Auto
game for Sony PlayStation 2 consoles. He co–founded the company
with fellow Brit Terry Donovan, a friend from his school years, to
develop and bring to the market the kind of games they wanted to play.
Grand Theft Auto
earned a slew of bad press for its ostensibly violent content, but
Houser compares the criticism to the kind often leveled at the music
business. "We get into trouble every now and again, it's
raw," the former record–label executive told
Guardian
writer Steven Poole. "That's what the record business was
like when it started. It's supposed to be energetic and
fun."

Houser was born in England the early 1970s and grew up in London, where
his father ran a well–known jazz club called Ronnie
Scott's. As a youngster, he was a first–generation devotee
of the new arcade–game culture, and met Donovan at the prep
school they both attended. During their early adult years, each worked
in the music business. Houser's experience included working in
promotions at Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), and he went on to direct
videos for performers under the BMG labels before taking an
artists–and–repertoire position with the company. When BMG
launched a new Interactive division, he was named head of international
product development for the new multimedia venture. When BMG decided to
spin it off into an independent, New York–based company, Houser
went with it.

Houser was in charge of finding and bringing to market new products for
gaming systems like the popular PlayStation 2 and X–Box. One day,
the first prototype for
Grand Theft Auto
arrived on his desk. It was the work of a Scottish game developer, DMA
Design, and its carjacking premise intrigued Houser and his
office–mates. At the time, the industry was eager to land the
next
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
–type success. "Graphically it wasn't nearly as
sharp as
Tomb Raider,
" Houser recalled in a
Rolling Stone
interview with David Kushner, "but it was deeply immersive. You
were put into a world and given choices."

An early version of
Grand Theft Auto
was released in Europe, where it became a cult favorite and gained a
measure of bad press for its violent content. Yet BMG's
Interactive division was about
to tank, and so in 1998 Houser asked Donovan to join him in New York in
order to launch their own company around
Grand Theft Auto,
which would be financed by a more established company called Take Two
Interactive. They named their new venture Rockstar Games, and began
releasing PlayStation games that lured a devoted following, including
Smuggler's Run
and
Midnight Club Street Racing.
Among denizens of New York City's Lower East Side and a subset
of Silicon Alley tech–industry workers, Houser and Donovan became
known for their "Rockstar" nights at bars and dance clubs
that promoted their new releases.

Grand Theft Auto III
was released for the new, highly anticipated Sony PlayStation 2 system
in 2001, and went on to become the best–selling title in the
gaming industry that year. It had an aggressive theme and some choices
could be construed as borderline sociopath: a player can choose to
solicit and then rob a prostitute, or win extra points for carrying out
a hit–and–run accident. Its "runaway
success," noted
Newsweek
's N'Gai Croal—"is proof that the
12–year–olds who grew up on [Nintendo's Super Mario
Brothers] are looking for something very different now that
they're in their 20s: games whose look, feel, and sound are drawn
from the edgy movies, comic books, and music that reflect a
twentysomething's interests."

The prospect of pre–teens being exposed to such a world prompted
a flurry of media coverage and even a political moment: the U.S. Senator
from Connecticut, Joseph I. Lieberman, cited it as an example of the
trend toward overly violent content in the entertainment industry in
general. "Games like
Grand Theft Auto
are particularly troubling because they go beyond just celebrating
violence generally, and actually reward players for engaging in
organized crime, murdering innocent people, and other forms of perverse,
antisocial behavior," the
New York Times
journalist John Leland quoted the senator as saying.

Houser and Donovan often pointed out that
Grand Theft Auto III
and its successful 2002 sequel,
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,
were rated "M" for mature content, and thus advisable for
sale only to those 17 and older.
Vice City
proved as successful as the first
Grand Theft Auto,
and sold a million copies in United States alone during its first week
of release. The story is set in Miami during the mid–1980s, and
positions the player as a low–level mobster trying to determine
who may have stolen his contraband. "Other games may offer more
killing and gore, but few are as ethically ambiguous," noted the
New York Times
's Leland. In defense of the bad press, Houser said that he had
met members of the New York City police department, and told the
Guardian
's Poole that they had said they liked his game. "And I
said, 'What about the fact that [the player can] kill
cops?,'" he recounted, "and they said,
'Well, you know what? There's a lot of people out there
trying to kill cops and we'd rather they did it in your game than
on the street.'"

Despite the controversial content,
Vice City
landed on the short list for Britain's Designer of the Year
competition, sponsored by the prestigious Design Museum. Its immersive
world is rife with pitch–perfect period detail, including a
choice of nine radio stations featuring various Eighties
pop–music genres. Museum director Alice Rawsthorn told a writer
for
Design Week,
Paul Murphy, that
Vice City
had made it onto the list of finalists "totally on its design
merits. Visually and technically, in terms of the narrative it's
much more complex than any other game—it is a genuine leap
forward."

Houser serves as president of Rockstar, and concentrates on product
development, while Donovan handles the marketing work; Houser's
brother, Dan, writes dialogue for the games. Their company's
name, Houser noted, continues to reflect their goal—to deliver
products with attitude. "At the end of the day you can't
[mess] with Keith Richards," Houser explained in the
Rolling Stone
interview with Kushner. "You can't argue with Keith Moon
riding down the street in a Rolls Royce.… That guy is the
original punk rock. And if we can bring a fraction of a percent of that
to games, then we're doing something."

Sources

Design Week,
February 27, 2003, p. 15.

Financial Times,
October 29, 2002, p. 94; November 26, 2002, p. 32.

Guardian
(London, England), November 3, 1999, p. 14.

Newsweek,
March 18, 2002, p. 50.

New York Times,
October 27, 2002.

Rolling Stone,
November 28, 2002, p. 61.

—
Carol
Brennan

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